Highly recommend checking out the new 11/11/98 archival release. Amazing versions of Gumbo, Halley’s Comet, Ghost, and a Walk Away bust out. The multitrack mix also sounds fantastic.
watching more of that guy's anatomy of a jam vids makes me really wish I had taken ear training more seriously in high school. or just had a better ear in general. the harmonic subtleties that guy hears are on a jazz level, really impressive
Man, that new 11/11/98 release is the business. First off, the recording and master is unbelievable. So crisp and clear, also nice and loud. There is pretty much no dead space in this show. Blistering Trey in Birds, wild Halley's, deconstructed Limb and wow the twisted funk in the massive second set-closing Ghost. Top to bottom hair raising stuff pretty much. I guess that's '98 Phish for ya, haha.
Was listening to the second set of the Fukuoka show today and damn that is some smooth and subdued funky shit i love it
Yep, legendary show. And for context I think the venue only fit like 300 people or something ridiculous. I believe the rumor is they were all on mushroom tea. The Twist -> Fukuoka Jam would get plenty of people’s votes for their favorite jam ever.
Yeah the end of the first untitled jam is as far as I got on the drive this morning, gonna do the walk away>jam 2 on the way home I guess. really really cool stuff
Lol I downloaded all 3 of them after posting just reading the reviews on archive. Got so much stuff I'm trying to get through recently
Does Phish do many true ballads? Squirming Coil seemed pretty tender but I couldn't tell if that was just because that whole Fukuoka show was kinda like that lol
1,000,000%. Those are usually the cool down songs and their best placement is after a series of complete heaters. In recent years Trey has definitely leaned into the more "dad rock" side of things with heartfelt ballads—Miss You is about the loss of his sister to cancer, and the new Ghosts of the Forest side project is songs about the death of his best friend Chris Cottrell. I recommend reading this post Trey wrote about Chris. It made me tear up. When Bob sat in with Phish in 2016, Bob actually sang Miss You which I think you'd dig. A lot of people thought he was singing it for Jerry. Strange Design is my favorite ballad. 67 shows and I still haven't seen it. Missed it by one show in 2016 (last time it was played, taboot). Sigh...
Wading in the Velvet Sea, Mountains in the Mist, Fast Enough for You, Dirt, and Waste are probably my top ballads.
If you wanted a recent and unique one that I really like, check out this one that closed the show. Mike is on fire throughout which leads them to give Mike the sendoff, only man on stage solo. Rare stuff considering Coil is traditionally a Page solo to close.
One of my favorite things to do is search bands or other things I like on sites that are not dominated that by kind of thing - so I've searched Grateful Dead like 100 times on this site for example just to see what people say. I just did it for Phish for the first time on here and it was way way funnier. The indie darling critical reevaluation the Dead have gone through in the last few years has DEFINITELY not hit Phish yet, but I think it will eventually. But for now watching people freak out about them on mainstream fests is very funny
I used to not let it annoy me, but now it kinda does. The vitriol they get from people who have done little or no listening really confuses me. Just look at this line from Pitchfork’s review for Vampire Weekend’s Father of the Bride: “For years, Vampire Weekend have implicitly threatened—in their perverse, contrarian, head-of-the-class way—to sound like Phish; Father marks the moment the threat becomes a promise.” Threatened? Threatened to try and be one of the most successful and creatively ambitious and trailblazing acts in music history? I wish more bands I liked “threatened” to strive for that!
the funniest part of that is, how does that album even sound like Phish at all lol. The Dead comparisons make some sense, Harmony Hall is very Touch-y, and in general there's a lot of instrumental breaks, weird instruments and sounds, and jangly americana-y guitar, but I still think even the Dead comparison is overblown. But Phish? I don't hear it all lol